


The Room

by lionessvalenti



Category: Baby-Sitters Club - Ann M. Martin
Genre: Community: babysitters100, Gen, Gen Work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-05
Updated: 2014-08-05
Packaged: 2018-02-11 22:17:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2085273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionessvalenti/pseuds/lionessvalenti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the triplets leave for college, the girls fight over Adam and Jordan's room, but Nicky has his own room for the first time ever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Room

For his entire life, Nicky Pike had shared a room. There might have been a time when he was a baby that he had his own room, he wasn't sure, but that hardly counted. He couldn't even remember it. But things were changing.

"It's not fair," Claire said at dinner. "Why does Vanessa get Adam and Jordan's room? She's only going to be have it for another year. I'm going to be here the longest."

Nicky had a sudden mental image of Claire as a five year old, throwing a temper tantrum, screaming, "Nofe air!" at the top of her lungs. He tried not to laugh.

"I'm older!" Vanessa exclaimed. "And I'm going to have a roommate next year at college. I deserve some privacy while I can have it."

Claire rolled her eyes. "You shouldn't be rewarded just because you're calendorically advanced."

This time Nicky couldn't hold back his laughter. " _Calendorically_?"

"That. Is not a word," Vanessa replied. She didn't find it nearly as a funny as Nicky did, but maybe that's because she was too busy arguing her point.

"Shakespeare would agree with me," Claire said. "He made up words to suit his needs."

"You're hardly Shakespeare."

"Mom. Dad. You could stop all this arguing by giving me Adam and Jordan's room," Margo piped up, as casually as possible.

"I don't think so!" Vanessa shrieked.

"Vanessa, really," Mrs. Pike said with a sigh.

Nicky poked at his spaghetti. He didn't have a horse in this race. One of the advantages (possibly the only advantage) of being the only boy left in the house was that he got the room he and Byron had shared for the last eight years to himself.

It wasn't that he was unsympathetic to what the girls were going through. None of them had ever had a room to themselves either, but even if he had a solution that gave everyone the privacy they yearned for, he wasn't going to share.

That morning, the triplets finished packing up the used mini-van the three of them had been sharing for the past year and drove to UConn. Even though the triplets had only just left, this argument had been going on since the girls realized there was going to be an empty bedroom.

"Just tell them that the room is mine!" Vanessa said, though this time at a lower decibel. "You already said it was mine. It was my room first."

"Are you saying that Mallory should move back and share it with you? It was her room first, too," Margo said.

"We did say the Vanessa's," Mrs. Pike said slowly. "But if you girls can come to a conclusion on your own that you're all happy with, we'll go with that."

"Ugh! being the youngest is the worst!" Claire huffed. "I never get anything except hand-me-downs. I should just move into the rec room."

Margo grinned. "Now that's an idea!"

"No one is moving into the rec room," Mr. Pike said.

Nicky thought about pointing out how he should get the biggest bedroom, since the triplets would need someplace to sleep when they came to visit (or maybe the idea was that they would sleep in the rec room), but he didn't want to press his luck. He definitely didn't want to get in the way of Claire's wrath (her temper was worse than Vanessa's or Margo's), and rubbing it in her face that he was automatically getting his own room would definitely do that.

"All of this fighting isn't helping," Mrs. Pike said. "If you girls can't work it out, no one is going to get the room, and it'll be a nice place for Adam and Jordan to sleep when they visit."

"Noooooo!" howled all three girls.

Mrs. Pike smiled. "We're going to go with the official ruling. We said that Vanessa got the room. There will be time for you two to have your own rooms after Vanessa leaves next fall. Everyone will get a chance to have their own room -- something the older kids never had, by the way."

"Yes!" Vanessa hissed.

"It's _not fair_ ," Claire said, slumping in her chair.

"Not only are you going to get your own room next year, you're going to have a whole two years of being the only kid in the house after Margo leaves," Nicky said. That felt safe enough to say.

Claire smiled a little bit. "I guess."

"Assuming, of course, that Margo can actually get into college," Nicky said. He couldn't help himself.

"Hey!" Margo said, and Nicky grinned.

After dinner, Nicky went upstairs and walked into his room. _His_ room. Sure, there were signs of Byron in the room -- posters, a few knick-knacks, and most obviously, the second twin bed -- but he'd lived there for eight years, it was only natural. It didn't matter, anyway. Byron was in another city, moving into his dorm room, where he'd live another four years with a roommate.

Nicky could still hear Claire, Margo, and Vanessa arguing downstairs, and in a moment he'd been anticipating for the last sixteen years, he shut the door to his room.


End file.
